#BangkokDriversSyndrome
I was about a few years short of being able to apply for my driver’s license when they announced they would no longer be offering lifelong permits. That means, for the rest of my life, I’m required to visit the Department of Land Transport every five years to renew this little white card that I’ve never really used — for which I am proud, as it means I’ve never been flagged down by traffic police!
Five years ago when I renewed it, I was forced to sit through an entire hour of a poorlymade film about two families — a perfect one with a kind father, a trophy mother and a good girl aptly named Noo Dee (meaning “good kid” in Thai, in case you haven’t guessed); and a badtempered broken family with a father named Amnart (meaning “power” — not a lame name choice at all). The moral of the story was that you should drive safely if you don’t want to be in accidents. Surprise, surprise.
A few weeks back, when my driver’s license was to expire again, I took a day off to renew it, with utter reluctance, as I love, love, love working. (You read that, big boss?) I got there at a few minutes after 8am and I was already number 80. The people before me must be the same people who got all the Maroon 5 tickets before they went on sale — they’re that fast.
Soon followed the standard physical tests, which were so easy I don’t understand why they bothered hiring four bored-looking people to man each of the stations — they might as well just let everyone walk through to the next room and instead use the salary saved to renovate the place. Or buy an air-freshener — my hair reeked of something like fermented soy afterwards.
After that, I was ushered into a dark room where the “educational” film would be screened. And what a great, positive way to start my morning it was! All of us were forced to look at very graphic, uncensored video clips of motorcycles getting run over. On repeat.
And I’m talking about really horrible, disturbing, Thairath- front-page-worthy accidents where people get killed on the spot. The woman next to me gasped out loud every time someone got crashed into, which was about 10 times, providing a really dramatic sound effect to the whole experience. Give me an overpriced popcorn and Pepsi combo and it would’ve felt like being in the cinema.
The final part of the session was yet another low-budget short film about road safety, starring an ab-baew (pretentious and innocent) woman who knows nothing but is driving the car, and a man who knows everything and isn’t going to shut up about it. In case no one has ever mentioned to you the sexist notion about women being useless drivers, here’s your chance to cotton on. Oh boy, did they hammer the point home in that film.
What they portrayed in that small, dusty room couldn’t be further from the reality of Bangkok’s roads. If you ask me what traffic rules I’ve learned from living in Bangkok my whole life, I’d say:
1. When you see people at zebra crossing, speed up and honk to get them out of your way. 2. When the car in the next lane signals that they want to switch to your lane, speed up and don’t let them. 3. If a car zooms past yours, you have to catch up if you want your dignity intact. 4. There are no traffic rules for motorcycles. 5. Ditto supercars. 6. Yellow light means give it all you’ve got and beat the red light.
And when you get pulled over for violating traffic rules, the correct response is to go home and rant about it on Facebook, with any or all of these golden sentences: “There are so many criminals out there and they had to pick such a small-time offender like me! Bad policemen! I pay tax, which is your salary, and that makes me your freaking boss!”
Happy driving, everyone. Friday traffic is waiting for you and it looks like rain already.